The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 4 eBook

(845) “The causes which at this time put assignats
apparently on a par with specie were the following.
A law forbade, under heavy penalties, the traffic
in specie, that is, the exchange at a loss of the
assignat against money: another law decreed very
severe penalties against those who, in purchases,
should bargain for different prices according as payment
was to be made in paper or in cash: by a last
law, it was enacted, that hidden gold, silver, or
jewels, should belong partly to the state, partly to
the informer. Thenceforth people could neither
employ specie in trade nor conceal it; it became troublesome;
it exposed the holders to the risk of being considered
suspected persons; they began to be afraid of it,
an(l to find the assignat preferable for daily use.”
Thiers, vol. iii. p. 213.-E.

(846) Louis-Philippe-Joseph, Duke of Orleans, who
had relinquished his titles and called himself Philippe
Egalit`e, and become a member of the National Convention,
in giving his vote for the death of his kinsman, had
read these words:—­“Exclusively governed
by my duty, and convinced that all those who have
resisted the sovereignty of the people deserve death,
my vote is for death!” The atrocity of this
vote occasioned great agitation in the -assembly;
it seemed as if, by this single vote, the fate of
the Monarch was irrevocably sealed. On the 6th
of November, in the same year, the Duke was himself
brought before the revolutionary tribunal, and condemned
on account of the suspicions which he had excited
in all parties. “Odious,” says M.
Thiers “to the emigrants, Suspected by the Girondins
and the Jacobins, he inspired none of those regrets
which afford some consolation for an unjust death.
A universal disgust, an absolute scepticism were
his last sentiments; and he went to the scaffold with
extraordinary composure and indifference, As he was
drawn along the Rue St. Honor`e, he beheld his palace
with a dry eye, and never belied for a moment his
disgust of men and of life,” Vol. iii, P. 205—­E.

(847) A little work which Miss More had Just published
anonymously. The sale of it was enormous.
Many thousands were sent by government to Scotland
and Ireland. Several persons printed large editions
Of it at their own expense; and in London Only many
hundred thousands were circulated.-E.

I shall certainly not leave off taunting your virtues,
my excellent friend, for I find it sometimes makes
you correct them. I scolded you for your modesty
in not acquainting me with your “Village Politics”
even after they were published; and you have already
conquered that unfriendly delicacy, and announced another
piece of which you are in labour. Still I se
there wanted your ghostly father, the )Bishop of London,
to join you to be quite shameless and avow your natural
child.(848) I do approve his doctrine: calling